2006 World Trip - Darjeeling, Gantok, Sikkim

Warning.  Long blog entry.  You might want to do it in stages… 

After the last blog entry we’ve been so busy that we haven’t had the chance to update it, and at several times we didn’t think we’d ever see a computer again to be able to update it.  

Calcutta to Darjeeling 

So starting where we left off, and you might want to make yourself comfortable. 

We bid a fond farewell to our rather damp hotel in calcutta, which came with bedbugs and mice at no extra charge, and caught a taxi to Howrah train station about a 15 minute drive away. 

Indian train stations, for the novice (which we both were at this point) is like a bad dream where nothing makes sense, yet it’s impossible to wake up.  We had to catch an over night train to NJP, where we would then share a jeep to the hill station town of Darjeeling.  

We entered the train station and naively looked for some type of sign or notice board which would direct us to our train.  We quickly learnt that it doesn’t work like that in India.  So we approached a cage which housed a harassed looking man with a big moustache, underneath a faded sign which had once said ‘Information.’  Unfortunately no-one had told us that queing is non-existent in India and it’s the person who is fastest to react when the big moustached man is available that gets his attention.  We quickly learnt, and headed towards our platform to wait 2 hours for our train.

It was here that we got our first glimpse of the persistence of beggars in Calcutta.  One lady stood next to Mark for 10 minutes asking for money, which Mark kept politely refusing.  Eventually she gave up and hit him on the elbow. 

Whilst waiting we got talking to a group of local people about our age, who saw us as a great opportunity to practise their english.  When the train arrived they walked us to our carriage.  Which was very kind of them, especially as we hadn’t realised that the train was about 1km long with countless carriages and we only had a few minutes to find ours.  After asking several non-english speaking train staff we eventually boarded our carriage (with air conditioning) and collapsed on our seats/beds.  

The young indians that we’d been chatting to were mildly confused as to why we had come to India, when we could have gone to London instead.  

Indian Trains

Throw away your preconceived ideas about what you think India will be like.  Instead think of the UK and turn everything on it’s head.  

To buy a ticket you have to first buy a copy of the train timetable, which for some unknown reason to us is called ‘Trains at a glance.’  This timetable is about as thick as a chunky magazine, and took us the best part of an afternoon to work out how to use it.  It was less of ‘trains at a glance’ and more like ‘trains: an indepth study.’

You first look up your departure station at the front.  It tells you which train numbers leave that station, you then go through all of these looking to see which of these trains go to your destination.  Which sounds easy, except it lists stations and not always locations.  i.e. when planning to leave calcutta it took us a stressed half an hour to work out that the main calcutta station is called Howrah, so we had to start searching for trains from Howrah not from Calcutta; and so on for every destination.  Except it doesn’t always list every station it stops at. 

Needless to say that working out your route could be the breakdown of many marriages, relationships and sane people.

You then have to decide on your style of accommodation.  We generally opt for 2AC, which is second class air-con.  With seats that become “beds”, free blankets, holey sheets and pillows that if they were a person would probably be studying a Phd in physics. 

The rough cost for a 15hour over night journey is about 2,000 rupees for the 2 of us.  Which translates to about 20 GBP.

The trains themselves are quite reasonable, although many only have squat toilets. 

Using a squat toilet is an interesting experiment for anyone used to western toilets.  You have to position your feet either side of a hole in the floor and try your best to aim accurately.  The results are interesting.  You then get a little pouring jug and fill it with water from a tap 1 foot off the floor; this water is for hygienic purposes if you have had one to many curries (toilet paper is not provided).  The technique for using this is still being perfected.  Whilst all this is going on you normally have to try and hold your breath in order to not pass out from the smell of hundreds of previous users.

When getting off any train, you then have to deal with hundreds of rickshaw and taxi drivers each keen for you to ride in their vehicle.  The trick is to look like you know what you are doing, so they’ll think it’s not worth bothering you.  Something which we have now perfected.  It consists of a small smile and a firm ‘no’, whilst we continue walking away from them.  American travellers have perfected the grumpy face whilst looking like school teachers telling off a naughty child.  We prefer our way.

On the occasion of arriving at NJP, we had to find a jeep to drive us to Darjeeling.  Jeeps being the only form of transport that are suitable for attempting the mountainous roads.  We ended up bartering with a young jeep owner with a trainee moustache, where we agreed on 120 rupees per person for the 4 hour journey.  The jeep was made for 8 people, we had 14 people in it, and the journey took 6 hours.

The mountain roads took some getting used to and mostly consisted of steep turns with sheer drops of 100’s of feet with no barrier on one side as the roads zig-zag up the mountains; occasionally there’d be a one foot square concrete block to prevent our jeep from plunging over the side.  Needless to say it wasn’t long before we needed a squat toilet.

Darjeeling

We arrived in Darjeeling and spent an interesting 45 minutes navigating our way through a maze of steep streets towards our guest house - the very indian styled ’Andy’s’ which was run by the lovely Mrs Gurung.  We never found out who Andy was.

The house was lovely and clean, with hot water once a day at 7.30am, and the rooms cleaned for us by the maid, who would knock at 8am, when one of us would wake up, stumble over to the door, let her in, then stumble back to bed, while she cleaned around our dirty socks and filthy rucksacks, before she then let herself out.

We spent 7 days in darjeeling, tasting tea, shopping, visiting various tourist attractions and failing to see any of the great views because of the cloud in which we were constantly enveloped, so we weren’t able to make use of the rooftop terrace until the last day.  When as you’ll see from our photo gallery we had fantastic views of Kanchenjunga - which has about 10 spellings, including kachenzonga.

Accident Number 1

One day we arrived back from a long walk, and headed for our room to enjoy an afternoon nap and wait for the rain to pass, when we suddenly heard Mrs Gurung scream at the top of her voice and say ‘Help Help, my…has fallen.’  We both heard different things.  Anna thought she’d said cat, Mark thought she’d said Dad.  So Mark was slightly quicker off the mark in rushing out of the room shoeless.  Anna followed right behind.  Mrs Gurung saw us race out and hurriedly directed us to the rain swept yard where we saw the maid in a heap on the floor directly underneath the upstairs balcony. 

Mrs Gurung quickly explained that the maid had slipped in the rain and fallen from the top floor balcony (which had no barrier or fencing around the edge.)  She’d fallen about 15ft onto concrete and was in quite a bad way.

We both rushed down to where she was and eventually (she didn’t speak english) managed to work out that she’d hurt her hip, arm and head.  Mrs Gurung was in shock and lost her head somewhat, but she did tell us that there were no ambulances in Darjeeling and then managed to translate between the maid and the two of us.

Two of the other guests arrived on the scene with a large umbrella, which they used to shield her from the rain which was relentlessly lashing down.

If you were confronted with this and there were no ambulances within a 4 hour drive and no call-out doctors, what would you do?

Anna and I made the decision to carry her inside, so the 4 of us moved her inside whilst holding her head still and trying not to move her around too much.  We laid her on cushions from a couch and covered her in blankets, whilst Anna checked her over and confirmed that we needed to get her to a hospital.  Mrs Gurung phoned her husband and also her driver, so that he could bring his small minibus taxi around to the front gate.  We’d have to wait 45 minutes for him to arrive.  All the time the maid was in a lot of pain.

Mark raced to our backpack where we dug out our first aid kit which was ready for anything, and gave the maid some Ibuprofen - as this was the strongest painkiller we had.

Meanwhile Lisa (our new friend from NZ) had arrived and because the maid was hidden from view on the floor was oblivious of the situation for several minutes, but once we explained the situation she instantly came to life and lent a hand.

Anna explained that we would need to construct a stretcher to take her down the three flights of stairs to the car.  So Lisa and I grabbed some spare blankets and then looked for some form of pole support.  At the same moment we both thought of her (leki) walking poles, which would hopefully take the weight.  So we grabbed the poles and extended them to their full length, laid them both on either side of the unrolled blanket and then rolled the blanket around them, until the poles were only sticking out at the top and bottom of either side of the blanket yet our improvised stretcher was still the width of a normal stretcher.

When the car arrived it took 5 of us to lift her onto the stretcher, and then carry her downstairs whilst trying to keep her comfortable.  We laid her on the back seat of the minibus, whilst the two of us crouched next to her on the floor and held her there, as the driver tackled Indian traffic with his horn.  After 5 minutes we both had cramp and were in agony, but kept taking her pulse as she was being increasingly unresponsive.

We went to 3 hospitals before finding one with an x-ray machine and a doctor.  Where she was rushed in and x-rayed, and it was revealed that she had broken her hip.  We went back to the guest house by ourselves, found a restaurant and ordered beer.

We take our health system for granted in the UK.  We had to make the call to move her, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to receive any medical attention.  If the injury was worse we could have seriously hurt her, yet we had no choice.  2 days later the maid went back to her parents in another town, with painkillers and a broken hip, but apart from that she was in perfect health.

Darjeeling to Gantok

We left Darjeeling to go North into the mountainous region of Sikkim, which bought us to within a short drive of Nepal, China and Tibet.

We shared another jeep, this time with Lisa and Alison who we’d met in Darjeeling.  The 4 hour trip was no less cramped than the last one, and finding accommodation was equally testing.  But eventually we checked into ‘The Travel Lodge’ - I kid you not.  Many hotels in the region were either disgusting or full.  The guys at the travel lodge put Anna and I up in the presidential suite, which was undergoing some renovations, so we got it for 500 rupees per night.  As part of our suite we also got a view of Kanchenjunga from our room, a lounge and a tv with ESPN on it - which is where we watched Barcelona beat Arsenal with a background of Andy Gray commentating in full negative mode.

We booked a trip to North Sikkim which left in 2 days, so we spent time on the cable car, visiting a Buddhist monastery and eating Tibetan food.  We also visited a beautiful lake - Tsongo Lake -  which had snow around the edges because it was so high.  It also had a small army of yaks, which were being offered to tourists in the same way as pony’s are offered to tourists at Blackpool.  They thought to make them less intimidating by putting woolly socks on their horns.  After witnessing several frightened indians holding on for dear life as the yak bulldozed its way along the main road, dragging its owner along by the rope which was tied to its nose, we decided that we probably wouldn’t ride a yak that day.  But did take a few photos.

We left for North Sikkim in our own jeep, which was an unusual experience because of the space we had.  But the roads were so bumpy that once again we couldn’t help but want to throw up for the entire 6 hour trip.

North Sikkim was beautiful with views of the Himalayas, glacial fast running rivers, very cold temperatures and the offer to bribe the army to take us the short distance into China - one that we refused.

North Sikkim is best explained by the lovely photos that we took, which are still on our camera.  So we won’t waste words on it here, but it was probably the most beautiful place we have ever visited, and we had a lovely time with our guide Rocean, our driver Poran, Lisa and Alison.

Accident 2

On our return to Gantok from Lachung North Sikkim our second accident took place.

Anna and I had taken the seats in the middle of the jeep, and Anna had decided to try and get some sleep, so she made a pillow from her jumper and rested her head on Mark’s legs as we drove along.  A few minutes later there was a sharp crack and fragments of glass shot from the windscreen straight to the back of the jeep, covering everyone in glass and reaching all the way to the back - with the majority passing where Anna’s head would have been were she not led down.

The driver (Poran) immediately slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt.  With glass all over his face and a cut under his eye he grabbed some stones to place behind the wheels so that the jeep wouldn’t roll down the hill.  Whilst he was doing this we jumped out and offered him bottles of water to rinse his eye with.

We presumed that a stone had hit the windscreen.  A few locals who had been further up the road at the time, wandered down to see how we were.  It was then that we learnt firstly from our guide and later on from the army, that it had actually been a bullet that had hit our car, not a stone.

We were told that one of the men further up the road had been trying to shoot his dog who had rabies.  He’d missed and hit our jeep in the distance.  The bullet had not gone through the windscreen as it had hit an external visor, but the force still caused a mess of the windscreen.  Had the bullet been millimeters lower it would have gone through and hit our driver in the eye, most likely killing him.   

On one side of the road was a sheer drop with no barriers, where if he’d’ve been shot we would have definately rolled down.

The Army quickly arrived and took the shooter away.  We never saw the dog, but the shooter was definately drunk.  It was 9.30am.

One of the top brass from the Army arrived half an hour later and told us that the man had been ‘taken care of.’   We didn’t ask and we don’t want to know.

Our driver was fine, he got taken to the nearby village (5mins away) and had some chai (very very sweet tea) which helped with the shock.  An hour later we were on our way to Gantok, none of us were hurt, our driver was fine and once the shock had past he soon enjoyed playing the hero, and who can blame him. 

We’d also taken some cracking (no pun intended) pictures of the gunshot mark on the windscreen - which are well worth a look when we put them up.

Mark alson got food poisoning on the way back and achieved a record time in sprinting back to the hotel to repeatedly vomit.  Sadly we don’t have any pictures of this.

Gantok to NJP

To get to Delhi we had to first take a jeep ride to NJP and wait 2 days for a train, so we ended up in a small hotel with a tv.  The town had nothing to offer except some shanty style shops selling fruit, t-shirts and coca-cola, so we spent 2 days watching TV and planning our next stage of the trip.

Accident 3

We hopped on the train at NJP to get to Delhi - which would take 23 hours, and settled down for a non-eventful trip….or so we thought

We got our heads down for some sleep at around 10pm, but got woken up about an hour into our sleep as the porter had pulled apart Mark’s curtains covering his bed, and Mark had woken up to this man staring at him.  Mark doesn’t take kindly to people waking him up, so the porter quickly shut the curtain and hurried off.  Later on he did the same to Anna and got the same ‘what?’ response.

At about 1am the entire carriage was awoken by a piercing scream and the young girl in the opposite bunks screaming in perfect English: “You Ba$tard, I’ll Kill You!!!”

We couldn’t completely see what was happening because we were on the opposite side of the train and had our curtains pulled across.  Mark was on the top bunk and Anna was on the bottom bunk.

She (on the top bunk) was  sharing a curtained compartment with her parents, who had quickly sprang out of their beds and ripped away her sheets wondering what was going. 

What had happened was the porter was in the top bunk of the next compartment along, and whilst the little girl (12 years old) had slept he had pulled the curtain away and was stroking her hair and pervetedly smiling at her, whilst still laying topless in his own bed on the other side of a thin partition.

The girl explained what she’d seen to her father who raced around to the porters compartment and shouted questions at him in hindi. 

We only observed the actions, as we could not understand any of the conversations.  However later on someone explained the finer details to us.

The Mother quickly joined the father, and they both started to slap him across the face, firstly with their hands and then when the porter apologized and admitted his guilt, the father grabbed his shoe and began to slap him in the face and on his body with the shoe - the worst insult that a person can give as it’s the dirtiest thing they possess.

More passengers gathered, and in a short while the train stopped.  By this time the porter was crying and pleading with the father, but shoutings and beatings were still going on.  Whilst the Mother and Father were beating the porter up, the girl watched for a bit, shouting her initial threat to him, before sitting back down in her compartment where Anna went and gave her a cuddle as she was shaking and starting to go into shock.

It’s worth mentioning that public affection between a husband and wife is rarely allowed, so for a stranger to be doing this to a young child whilst she is sleeping is unforgivable and a much bigger issue than it would be in the UK - where it would still be a police matter.  Another problem is that no one knew where his other hand was whilst he was stroking her.

The train continued to the next station where the police boarded our compartment, briefly questioned us.  Then later on the porter was escorted from the train by a sizable number of police.

It’s hard to describe the fear that we felt when we woke to screaming, then shouting in a language that we don’t understand and then a beating of such ferocity and emotion, for which we did not know the reason.  Even when we did understand the situation, the rage that was floating around and the shock that hits you of what was happening just 2 feet away from us was astronomical.

It took us a long time to get back to sleep, and for several days afterwards the fear and shock still lingered.

Delhi

We then arrived in Delhi, where we checked into a lovely air conditioned hotel, which shielded us from the 40+degree heats by day and 35+degree heats during the night.

We’ve just finalised the next stage of our trip which involves corbett tiger reserve, dehra dun, mussorie, agra and then back to calcutta, before flying to singapore.